With the Fourth of July less than a month away, one of the perennial favorites of the Parade is beginning its preparations for this year's event. The Juneau Volunteer Marching Band has been playing in Juneau's Fourth of July Parade for nearly four decades. Sarah McNair-Grove, the President of the Juneau Community Bands, filled in a few details.

"Well of course the Fourth of July is a wonderful holiday in Juneau and we like to participate in the parade with some music so that's the sort of the main purpose of the Juneau Volunteer Marching Band, and tonight's our first rehearsal for the 2013 Fourth of July Parade.

We usually kind of start kind of slow with a few people and we grow as we get closer and closer to the Fourth, we've had anywhere between twenty five and forty people actually marching in the parade, so it depends from year to year who's available.

The band has been around for; I guess 1976 was actually the very first time that the parade had a marching band and we've been operating ever since then so over the years we've accumulated music, we've accumulated a few instruments we have drums for all of the drummers and marching gear so that they don't have to bring their own drums, we have a couple of Sousaphones those people who play a sousaphone and don't have their own we can provide those to them, and then we also have music.

We are looking for more players and we would hope that anybody out there who plays an instrument that wants to come and march in the parade we'd love to have you, we are also looking for a drum major, we've had a drum major for several years who has moved out of town so if anybody was a drum major in high school and college or want to be a drum major, we've got an opening for you.

We practice Wednesday nights from 7 to 9 pm at the Salvation Army Church on Willoughby Avenue, and so just come and participate with us if you want more information we do have a website, juneaucommunityband that you can get information on."